


Way Number One

by BroodingSoul



Series: All the Ways Derek Made Stiles Feel Beautiful [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Feelings, M/M, Some Plot, no confidence!Stiles, smitten!Derek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-08 19:55:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1136720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BroodingSoul/pseuds/BroodingSoul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/Vendelin">Vendelin</a> made a crack about Derek singing "What Makes You Beautiful" to Stiles at karaoke night.  So I decided to document all the ways Derek made Stiles feel beautiful.</p><p>Thanks to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/aprettysmalldose">aprettysmalldose</a> for the last minute beta.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Way Number One

**Author's Note:**

> [Vendelin](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Vendelin) made a crack about Derek singing "What Makes You Beautiful" to Stiles at karaoke night. So I decided to document all the ways Derek made Stiles feel beautiful.
> 
> Thanks to [aprettysmalldose](http://archiveofourown.org/users/aprettysmalldose) for the last minute beta.

It starts like this:  it’s an ordinary day, a pack meeting is coming to a close, and Stiles stretches.  That’s all.  He scratches his jaw, yawns, and stretches, revealing an inch or two of skin and a trail of hair that travels from just above his belly button to below the waist of his pants.  Suddenly, all Derek can think about is that swath of skin and the crook of Stiles' fingers as they scratch his jaw and just like that, Derek is smitten.

He doesn't realize he's looking at Stiles strangely until Stiles cocks a questioning eyebrow.

"You okay, man?" Stiles asks.

"Yes," Derek replies, and leaves it at that.  It's a terse answer that doesn’t actually answer anything, the kind of answer everyone expects from him.  But Stiles' eyebrow rises a little higher like he knows Derek is thinking something else.  It's unnerving, but Derek offers nothing else by way of explanation.  He just turns away and nods his head to Scott and Isaac as they leave.

"But like…are you okay?  Because I think I saw you blush, and you don't blush.  You're not the blushing type."

"I am, I didn't, and I'm not."

"Just got real hot all of a sudden, then?" Stiles teases.  "A hot flash?  Is it that wolfy time of the month for you?  Should I stock you up on chocolate and sad rom coms?"

"Stiles…" Derek sighs, rubbing his eyes, and suddenly he's wondering why he thought he was smitten with Stiles.  But then the boy grins toothily and waggles his eyebrows at Derek and Derek thinks _oh right, that's why_.

And it keeps happening like that.  Stupid little things that Derek has seen Stiles do a hundred times before, but never really paid attention to.  The way Stiles chews absently on the corner of his lower lip when he's deep in the middle of research.  The crease of worry that marks the brow between his eyes, the one that Derek wants to kiss away every time he sees it, because Stiles should never have to worry about anything.  Even just the way Stiles sends a text message, his fingers flying over the touch screen, sends Derek into a tizzy.  He's gotten better at controlling how he looks at Stiles when those feelings take over, but he's not gotten any better at controlling those feelings.

Derek becomes even terser when talking to Stiles.  In fact, "talking" is perhaps too strong a word.  Anything he says to Stiles is monosyllabic or, more often, nothing more than a murmur of agreement or a grunt of dissent.  Nobody else really pays attention, but Derek catches Stiles looking more and more baffled, until he just stops talking to Derek entirely.  Instead, he sits quietly at pack meetings and contributes nothing more than the occasional nod.

***

Stiles is confused.  It's nothing new for Derek to suddenly clam up or hell, even disappear for a week or two with no warning, so normally Stiles wouldn't think twice about the way Derek is acting.  Except this time, Derek is only acting this way toward _him_.  Derek holds a conversation with Allison, at length, about the finer points of Chinese finger daggers versus the Chilean corvo.  He actually cracks jokes with Scott.  He praises Isaac for getting a B+ on a trigonometry test, but when Stiles mentions he got an A, Derek barely looks at Stiles when he passively grunts "Good job."

Stiles knows when it started.  It was the alpha meeting a couple weeks ago, when everyone gathered to talk about the witch in the woods (which, what a cliché, but what’re you gonna do?).  The meeting went smoothly, no arguments, and Stiles was the one who came up with crux of the plan (a mirror to reflect her spells back onto her, like, it didn’t take a genius to come up with that idea, just someone who watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer when it was released on Netflix Instant).  But then at the end of the meeting, Stiles caught Derek giving him a weird look.  He didn’t know what was going on, but he teased Derek like he normally would, and that was it.  He went home.  Derek stayed in the loft.

Except after that is when Derek started acting weird.  When they all met to fight the witch, Derek didn’t even look at him.  Sure, in the middle of the fight when the witch aimed a curse at Stiles, Derek knocked him out of the way and took the spell to the chest.  But after the battle was over and Stiles thanked Derek, Derek just grunted and walked away, the tips of his ears still green from the spell.  All the Shrek jokes probably didn’t help, but he and Derek have teased each other about worse, so Stiles is thoroughly perplexed.

Everything after that goes downhill, in Stiles’ eyes, and it kind of guts him.  He knows he and Derek have never been particularly close, but Stiles thought maybe that had a special bond or something.  Mutual disdain covering up secret affection.  Stiles gave up any idea of romantic affection from Derek Hale long ago—pretty much since they met, but his trysts or whatever with Kate Argent, Erica, and the friggin’ Darach confirm a sort of gorgeous, dangerous _type_ , one that’s not Stiles—but Stiles thought there was a thing about himself that Derek understood, and vice versa, and that it meant something.

So he’s not bereft, but he’s also not showing up to pack meetings any earlier than he needs to.

***

Derek feels like an idiot, but he's never been terribly great with things like _feelings_ and _emotions_ and _romantic relationships_ , especially considering that his last couple of paramours literally tried to kill all of his friends.

But then there's another pack meeting and Derek never even _looks_ at Stiles the entire time, and Stiles doesn't speak the entire meeting.  Derek is pretty sure Stiles is the type of person who talks in his sleep, so for Stiles to go an entire hour without saying anything, something must be wrong.  The meeting comes to an end and everyone leaves.  Derek closes the door to the loft and turns around to see Stiles, still sitting on the couch, staring at a fixed point above his own knees and breathing like he's trying to work up to saying something.

There's that crease line in his brow again.  Derek tries not to look at it.

"Did I--" Stiles begins, then clears his throat to cover up his quavering voice.  "Did I do something wrong?"  His jaw clenches and the furrow in his brow creases deeper.

"What?" Derek asks, more gruffly than he intends.

Stiles continues to look at a fixed point in front of him.  "I know that you and I aren't all talkative and buddy-buddy, but I thought that was, like, our _thing_.  You snark, I snark back, you huff and puff, I roll my eyes, and that's, like, our friendship."  He finally tilts his head up and looks at Derek.  "I thought we were friends."

The look in Stiles' eyes kind of breaks Derek in the worst way.  "We are," he relents, adding nothing further.

"Then what did I _do_?"

"You didn't do anything, Stiles," Derek mutters, looking down and breaking eye contact.

"Then what the actual fuck is going on?"  Anger replaces the uncertainty in Stiles voice and he shoots to his feet.  "Why the excessive stoic monosyllabism with me?  Are you _trying_ to make me hate you?"

"Yes," Derek answers instantly, surprising himself.  Head still down, Derek looks up and meets Stiles' gaze.

***

 _Yes_ was the answer Stiles was expecting, but he was not expecting this look in Derek's eyes.  It's guilty, which, Stiles never took Derek for the type to ever really admit fault or guilt, but also there's something else there.  Like…apprehension?  Bashfulness?  Stiles shakes his head and glosses over the look.

"But _why_?" Stiles insists, his voice walking a fine line between indignant and whining, and there it is.  Derek rolls his eyes and sighs that exasperated sigh and it's _finally_ the Derek he's used to, until Stiles puts bashfulness and exasperation together and comes up with _Derek fucking Hale has a crush on him_.

"Hunh," is all Stiles can come up with, a contemplative puff of sound as his brain runs a marathon trying to process everything that wasn't actually just said.  Particularly, _why_?

***

 _Yes_ was not the answer Derek was expecting to give, but it’s what came out.  He thinks about it for a second and realizes that if Stiles hates him, it makes everything easier.

He’s not an idiot.  Derek knows Stiles is attracted to him, could practically smell it on him the first time he threatened Stiles in Stiles’ room, the time Stiles referred to him as his cousin Miguel to his friend Danny.  And Stiles’ attraction to him was never an issue because Derek wasn’t attracted to Stiles, until he fucking stretched at that pack meeting and changed everything.

If Derek can make Stiles hate him, then they’ll never get together.  And if they never get together, Derek won’t have his heart broken.  And that’s something he can’t risk again, because the adage that “it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” is complete bullshit.

But now Derek watches Stiles, whose eyes are lost in thought, bringing back that furrow in his brow.  He can't stop staring at it, like it's the source of everything that's beautiful in the world.  Because when Stiles worries, he thinks, and when he thinks, he comes up with plans, and when he comes up with plans he saves everyone's lives, and it's just one more thing Derek realizes is wonderful about Stiles.  A surge of emotion runs through him and he realizes that Stiles is a risk worth taking.

***

Stiles realizes that he and Derek have just been standing in the loft in silence for a good two minutes and he focuses his eyes on Derek.  The look in Derek's eyes is so intense that Stiles has to actually prevent himself from taking a step back.  The look is unmistakeable, it can only mean one thing:  _I want you_.

A tingle starts somewhere in Stiles' stomach, somewhere right underneath his belly button.  It feels like it's sucking all of the matter out of him, turning him into something incorporeal.  Or maybe it's filling him with helium.  Or maybe it's taking all of his breath away so he sucks in a breath to get more air.  But he 's afraid that if he sucks in more air he's just going to float away.  That's what this feeling is making him want to do, is float away.  Nobody has ever looked at Stiles the way Derek is looking at him right at this moment and the thought that keeps running through his head is _why, why, why_.

Stiles knows what he looks like.  He's awkward and gangly and on most days describing his skin as "pasty" is a compliment.  Other days, "translucent" is also an apt description, or possibly "fluorescent."  He's never been fond of the moles that dot his face and torso like little land mines of blemishes and it's an understatement to say he doesn't like them.  He thinks he has a nice smile, but he's also pretty sure it's situated on a face that's somehow too angular and too round at the same time, and actually maybe his upper lip is too thin.  And the less said about the bird's nest that is his hair, the better.

But Derek is looking at him like…well, like Derek likes all of that.  And that confuses Stiles because Derek looks like Derek and Stiles looks like Stiles and the Dereks of the world do not go for the Stiles's of the world.  Hell, the Stiles's of the world don't go for the Stiles's of the world because they're too busy drooling over the Dereks of the world.

And to be honest, the way Derek is looking at him makes Stiles feel a little shaky, because it's the way his dad used to look at his mom and just that thought makes his brow crease again.

***

Derek sees the furrowed brow, hears Stiles' shaky breath, and closes the distance between him and Stiles.  Before he can stop himself, he reaches his hand up and smooths his thumb over the worried furrow.  Stiles' breath catches in his throat as Derek's fingers graze his cheek while his thumb travels up and down the length of the crease.

It's weird, but it actually makes Stiles feel better, this soft touch trying to smooth away all of his bad thought wrinkles.  Having closed them when Derek reached up, Stiles opens his eyes and finds himself staring at Derek's lips, slightly parted and altogether inviting.

Stiles stumbles a step back, leaving Derek's hand raised in the air, like he's conducting the orchestra of drums in Stiles' chest.  Derek drops his hand but raises his eyebrows, questioning if he went too far.

"I--I'm sorry," Derek stutters.  "You just.  When you worry, your brow--"

"--I'm not going to kiss you yet," Stiles overlaps.

Both of them fall silent.  Derek breaks it first.  "Yet?" he asks, taken aback, his eyebrows reaching even newer inquisitive heights on his face.

“Well, um, I…” Stiles stammers, “I’m no—not opposed to it.  I’d definitely be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it.  But now that it’s an apparent possibility, it’s kind of overwhelming because I never thought…” he trails off, heading down the wrong path.

“Never thought what?” Derek asks, after a second.

 _That you’d be attracted to me_ , Stiles thinks, but opts for saying, “That you’d ever think about kissing me.”

“So mutual kiss-wanting is overwhelming?” 

Stiles huffs.  “It’s like taking a kid to get ice cream and there’s thirty-one flavors and he wants them all but his dad tells him he can only get one scoop, so he has to _really think about_ which flavor he wants.”

“There are other ice cream flavors that want to kiss you?” Derek asks, trying to suppress a grin.

Stiles is too busy flustering to notice he’s being teased.  “Dude, no, that’s _so_ not the point of the metaphor.  The point is, there’s suddenly this _plethora_ of possibility that apparently exists and I need to figure out which possibility I want.”

“What about toppings?  Or cones?  Is there just one kind, or does the kid have to choose between waffle cone or sugar cone?”  Derek has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.

“ _It comes in a bowl_ ,” Stiles snaps, and then sees the crinkle lines around Derek’s eyes.  “Oh, you ass!”  He smacks Derek in the chest with an open hand.  Derek openly laughs now, and Stiles realizes he’s never seen the werewolf laugh before.  It does good things to his face.

“My point is,” Stiles glares, trying and failing to hold on to righteous indignation, “that I would like to take some time to think about if I want to kiss you just because you want to kiss me, or if I want to kiss you because I actually want to kiss you.”

Derek subdues his laughter.  “That makes sense,” he agrees.

“ _Thank_ you,” Stiles huffs.

Derek reaches his hand out again and runs his fingers down Stiles jawline, and Stiles lets him.  He already knows he’s going to kiss Derek.  It’s just a matter of when, because he’s sure not going to give Derek the satisfaction of kissing him now, even if Stiles really wants to, and _God_ , he really wants to.

Stiles fights the urge to grab Derek’s hand and nuzzle his cheek against the palm, and after a couple of seconds, Derek retracts his hand.  There’s a pause as the two take each other in. 

“So…” Derek begins.

“Yes?”

“Is asking you out on a date off the table while you decide if you want to kiss me?”

Stiles already decided he was going to say yes before Derek even finished the sentence, but he pretends to ponder the question.  “Well…” he considers. 

“I promise we don’t have to go out for ice cream, since I know that confuses you.”

Stiles shoots daggers at Derek’s smirk.  “Just for that,” he says, “I’m getting two scoops.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm keeping a running list and plan on writing more ways Derek made Stiles feel beautiful, but if you have any other suggestions, I'd love to know them!
> 
> Also, you can find me [here](http://broodingsoul.tumblr.com) on Tumblr if you're so inclined.


End file.
